Modeling Explosive Opinion Depolarization in Interdependent Topics

TL;DR

This paper introduces the social compass model to analyze how opinions on interdependent topics can rapidly shift from polarization to consensus, highlighting the role of topic correlation and social influence.

Contribution

It presents a novel opinion dynamics model for interdependent topics and analytically demonstrates conditions for explosive depolarization.

Findings

Phase transition from polarization to consensus can be explosive.

Uncorrelated topics lead to abrupt opinion shifts.

Model validated with real election data.

Abstract

Understanding the dynamics of opinion depolarization is pivotal to reducing the political divide in our society. We propose an opinion dynamics model, which we name the social compass model, for interdependent topics represented in a polar space, where zealots holding extreme opinions are less prone to change their minds. We analytically show that the phase transition from polarization to consensus, as a function of increasing social influence, is explosive if topics are not correlated. We validate our theoretical framework through extensive numerical simulations and recover explosive depolarization also by using initial opinions from the American National Election Studies, including polarized and interdependent topics.